The $7 billion is the sum Kvrivishvili and Prime Minister Kobakhidze gave the maritime forum in Batumi on 7 September, when the ports’ 8-month throughput stood at 13.7 million tonnes, 24% up on a year earlier; the working group is the new item, discussed and not yet formed, its members named by sector and no date or protocol given. At Anaklia “active construction work is currently underway”, in the ministry’s words, on the Black Sea site whose Chinese-led consortium the government selected in 2024. Anaklia is the cornerstone of the ministry’s account.
China’s side of the corridor is the freight. Container traffic through Georgia on the Middle Corridor rose 71% in the first 8 months of 2025, and Georgia’s trade with China ran to $1.6 billion in 9 months of that year, both figures Tbilisi’s own from the prime minister’s Shanghai visit in November; the free-trade agreement of 2018 was updated in April, when the economy minister signed the revised text during her visit to China. A transport working group would put the 4 modes under one table for the first time.
Anaklia is the cornerstone of the ministry’s account.
The flights are the part a passenger would notice: Shanghai to Tbilisi was announced for July with China Eastern; Beijing and Guangzhou are the next 2 on the list, “prospects for developing direct routes” in the ministry’s phrase. The rail modernisation and rolling-stock overhaul behind the doubling target carry no figure of their own on the page, and the $7 billion is the envelope for all of it.